UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 31 of 150

Correct — D, all three: health, education and living standard. The global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is built on exactly these three equally weighted dimensions, unpacked into ten indicators — health (nutrition, child mortality), education (years of schooling, school attendance) and standard of living (cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets). It was developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) with UNDP support and first published in the Human Development Report 2010, where it replaced the Human Poverty Index that the HDR had been using since 1997. Because all three listed items are dimensions of the MPI, the code that accepts i, ii and iii together is the only complete answer.

• (a)Only i is correct — Health is a genuine MPI dimension, but it is only one of three. Restricting the index to health would leave out schooling deprivation and the household-level living-standard deprivations that supply six of the MPI's ten indicators.
• (b)Only ii and iii are correct — This drops health, which carries a full one-third of the MPI's weight through its two indicators — nutrition and child mortality. No version of the MPI omits health.
• (c)Only i and ii are correct — Health and education alone give you something close to the older Human Development Index thinking. The MPI's distinctive contribution is precisely the third leg — concrete household living conditions such as cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing and assets.

The MPI is a non-monetary, household-level measure of poverty: instead of asking whether a household's income falls below a rupee cut-off, it asks in how many specific ways the household is deprived. Using the Alkire-Foster method, each household gets a weighted deprivation score across ten indicators grouped in three equally weighted dimensions; a household counted as multidimensionally poor is one deprived in at least one-third of the weighted indicators. The headline MPI value is then the incidence of poverty (the share of people who are poor) multiplied by its intensity (the average share of deprivations those poor people suffer), which is why the MPI can fall either because fewer people are poor or because the poor are deprived in fewer ways.

The question is really testing whether you can recall the MPI's three dimensions and resist the pull of the partial codes. A useful check: the MPI was created to go beyond income, so any option that quietly narrows it back to one or two 'human development' dimensions is working against the whole point of the index. Note also what the MPI does not include — purchasing power parity, GDP growth, budget deficits or any other national macro variable; that was exactly the trap UPSC set in its 2012 question on the same index.

• Global MPI dimensions: health, education and standard of living, each weighted one-third.
• Ten indicators — health: nutrition, child mortality; education: years of schooling, school attendance; living standard: cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets.
• Developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) with UNDP; first published in the Human Development Report 2010.
• It replaced the Human Poverty Index, which the Human Development Report had introduced in 1997.
• A household is multidimensionally poor if its weighted deprivation score is at least one-third (33.3 per cent).
• Present-day note for a 2026 reader: NITI Aayog's National MPI for India (first baseline report published in 2021) keeps the same three dimensions but uses twelve indicators, adding maternal health and a bank account.

• Assuming the MPI uses income or purchasing power parity — it is deliberately non-monetary and measured at the household level.
• Confusing the MPI's dimensions with the HDI's: the two share the labels health, education and living standard, but the HDI measures national achievement through life expectancy, schooling and GNI per capita, while the MPI counts household deprivations.
• Believing the MPI replaced the HDI. It replaced the Human Poverty Index; the HDI is still published.

UPPSC asks composite indices as direct recall — which dimensions or indicators an index includes, who publishes it, in which year it began — while UPSC prefers statement-based versions that mix in a plausible macro variable such as PPP or GDP growth to see whether you know the index is household-level.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The global Multidimensional Poverty Index is published by the UNDP in partnership with

  • (a)the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative
  • (b)the International Monetary Fund
  • (c)the International Labour Organization
  • (d)the World Trade Organization

  Answer(a) The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative — OPHI, based at the University of Oxford, developed the MPI with UNDP support and it first appeared in the Human Development Report 2010.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the global Multidimensional Poverty Index, a household is identified as multidimensionally poor when its weighted deprivation score is at least

  • (a)20 per cent
  • (b)one-third
  • (c)one-half
  • (d)two-thirds

  Answer(b) One-third — a household deprived in at least 33.3 per cent of the weighted indicators is counted as MPI-poor; those between 20 and 33.3 per cent are described as vulnerable to multidimensional poverty.